Blog Entries

Performance or Maintainability

jordan.delozier@gmail.com — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

I've been thinking about a question I was asked on a practice exam I took earlier this week. The question appears to have no valid answer....

[quote]In a general sense, which is more important: performance or maintainability of an application?

Answers...

performance first, maintainability second
Maintainability first, performance second
Maintainability
Performance
[/quote]

So, being the developer I'd prefer Maintainability this way it would [...]

Passwords

SidewinderX@optonline.net — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Passwords are our digital fingerprints. Shouldn't they be as secure as we want them? Apparently some websites don't think so.

How are our passwords stored?
Most websites store users passwords as an md5 (message digest 5) hash. Essentially, your plain text password is passed through a function that hashes your password. That hash is stored in the websites database. Since md5 is a one way hashing algorithm (there is no way to convert the md5 hash in the database back to your plain te [...]

Setting up Windows Server 2003 as a Domain Controller, dhcp server, dns server, wins server, ...

pjm35@buffalo.edu — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Setting up Windows Server 2003 as a Domain Controller, dhcp server, dns server, wins server, and share an internet connection through a wireless router.

Since I am a system admin, every so often, I am required to perform a new server installation that won't screw up my existing network. Since I thought others might benefit from knowing how to do this, I might as well blog about it. I am going to also make this able to share a local connection to the internet via a usb verizon [...]

PHP Nowdocs

SidewinderX@optonline.net — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

A few weeks ago Jordan blogged about the heredoc syntax. The point I want to raise in this blog, is the heredoc syntax parses PHP code, similar to double quotes around a string. For example
[code=php]$name = "John";
$john = <<<EOD
Hello World!<br />
EOD;

$world = <<<EOD
Hi $name!<br /><br >
EOD;[/code] Would output [quote]Hello World!
Hi John![/quote] Notice $name was parsed as a variable not as a literal. Until PHP 5.3 [...]

NaNoWriMo Day 15

wtwentyman@copper.net — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Read about images, finally got the EEE PC loaded with the necessary libraries to compile wxWidgets for GTK, and ran out of hard-drive space. That's what happens when you've already downloaded a ton of junk onto, with useless updates, etc. Spent this evening reseting it to factory defaults so I can start the process over again without all the stupid updates.

My Recent Shell Scripting

SidewinderX@optonline.net — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Recently I have been working on some shell scripts to aid in the installation of applications. One of the scripts I have been working on is a LAMP (linux, apache, mysql, and php) installer. For almost two years I ran a local WAMP server (same as LAMP but the operating system is Windows) which was installed by clicking some executable (XAMPP / VertigoServ). However, Linux shows no sympathy for lazy Windows users, and thus forces us to use a restrictive package manager or install form source. More [...]

PHP Reflection and Plugins

jordan.delozier@gmail.com — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

The PHP reflection API allows you to view metadata and comments in your PHP scripts which allow you to create highly expandable PHP scripts. It may seem trivial, the ability to look at your own source code from your script but the set of classes and methods provided by this API give you the ability to create easy plugin features, invoke code pragmatically and create instances of code.

Imagine you wanted to allow users of your product to upload addons. The addons will be held i [...]

NaNoWriMo Days 5 14

wtwentyman@copper.net — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Not much to say, since I've been reading function definitions, etc. Pretty boring stuff. Getting anything to Link, however, has been an adventure.

GCC has a few interesting "quirks": first, it doesn't automatically locate compiled objects in the search path. Second, it doesn't automatically handle linking of dependent object files in the correct order. The result is that you end up with hideously long link commands, and if you get your compiled units in the wrong o [...]

Programs Under the Hood...Part 8: Disassembling Stuff

dargueta@stanford.edu — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Welcome back to Part 8 of Programs Under the Hood. Today we're going to disassemble a BIOS interrupt to get a real-world example of what programs are structured like, and we'll see if we can convert some of it to C/C++ code. (I apologize for the large line breaks. For some reason, they just appeared.)

POPPING THE HOOD-DISASSEMBLING A BIOS ROUTINE

A few issues back I mentioned that the BIOS provides a lot of basic functional [...]

Kill Process if in both listboxA and ListboxB

jared_viper15@hotmail.com — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Hey every1 i need some help, i makeing a program in .net to block unwanted Exe's and such. i have some idea of what i want to do but its not working out for me..

-i have tried converting the listboxes to arrays then saying:
if array1 items = array2's items then kill the item that is similar?

-i have tried this as well:
if listbox1.item =true in listbox2.items then get process name and terminate
next
This is the code i'm using at the moment:
[...]

Do web hosts oversell?

SidewinderX@optonline.net — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

What is overselling?
Simply put, overselling is when a host offers to more resources to their clients than what they physically have.

I would venture to say, all hosts oversell. Overselling for the most part is a legitimate practice. Most owners of dedicated servers who specialize in web hosting receive, say, an 80 GB hard drive and 8000 GB of transfer from their data center. Lets assume one of the packages a host offers for $5 a month is 1 GB of storage and 10 GB of transfer. Physical [...]

PHP: Study

jordan.delozier@gmail.com — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

It has been a while since I wrote a blog so I thought I'd write about what I've been doing. For the past month I've been studying for Zend Certified Engineer test which is a PHP test. From what I can tell the test asks very tricky questions that require you to have a working knowledge of many PHP functions (with Arrays and Strings being the largest two). So far I've managed to memorize most of the 74 array functions and am working on the string functions now.

I've [...]

Random Numbers

SidewinderX@optonline.net — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Have you ever been in a conversation where someone blurts out something completely off topic? You say to yourself, “well, that was random.” Chances are, unless that person suffers from a mental disability, that spew of “random” verbiage was not really random.

What is randomness?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines random as “made, done, or happening without method or conscious decision.” More than likely, your conversation sparked some conscious relocation which resulted [...]

NaNoWriMo Days 3 and 4

wtwentyman@copper.net — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

After spending about 3 hours on day 2 to get things working, Days 3 and 4 were pretty boring. I'm plowing through chapter 4, which is a summary of most of the components used in wxWidgets. I spend a LOT of my time reading through them thinking that they're just like what Delphi uses.

Based on what I'm reading, everything should work fairly well. My biggest issue for my long-term goals is determining whether I should use wxGTK or wxX11 when I compile for my EEE PC. [...]

NaNoWriMo Days 1 2

wtwentyman@copper.net — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

NaCoWriMo: Day 1

I had prepared for this day by
downloading MinGW, and installing it. I had also downloaded
wxWidgets and Boost source code in preparation. I wasn't sure if I
would be using Code::Blocks or just command-line tools, but would
wing it. Began reading, having determined I needed to read a minimum
of 20 pages per day to finish the book in one month. My goal is to
“Learn wxW [...]

Extract Variables

SidewinderX@optonline.net — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0100

A few months ago, in one of the php articles / books I was reading I stumbled across something called variable variables. Essentially, it lets you create a variable whose name is defined by another variable. I thought to myself “where the hell would this be useful?” A few days after Jordan bloged about variable variables I actually found a use for them:

ionManager (a framework and CMS built myself), uses the MVC enterprise pattern. The model querys the database and generates/manipulat [...]

Programs Under the Hood...Part 7: Making Decisions

dargueta@stanford.edu — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Welcome to Part 7 of Programs Under the Hood. Today we're going to learn a bit more about how programs make decisions on the assembly language level. I promise after this we'll get back to the disassembler project.

FLOW CONTROL STRUCTURES

Everyone who knows C/C++ is familiar with the goto keyword, the bane of many a programmer's existence. Using goto makes code harder to read and t [...]

Programming "Just a stage"

jhyland87@hotmail.com — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100

So, to me Programming is fun, and its also something id like to do, maybe not as a fulltime job, but as a side job, like ToastedPenguin, but pretty much everywhere I go for my job, I get asked "So what do you do on your freetime", and I say "I like to make website, im a web developer" Every now and then I get someone who is interested in that kinda stuff, but mostly, I get "I went through that stage too". Is programming a stage for you? I enjoy it way too much, and it can pay rather well too.

Hosting Issues Suck

jhyland87@hotmail.com — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100
So, lately I have had a ton of issues with ToastedPenguin.com. Lets start at the beginning.

When I got the site, the registration had some issues that had not been fixed, the issue was it would not connet to the registrar, thus people who signed up would not be able to register a domain, and I would have to do it manually.

I contacted WHMAP, (the company who makes the software that connects to the registrar), and asked them what the issue is, I actually ended up talking to the per [...]

Zend Studio for Eclipse Training: Day 5/6

jordan.delozier@gmail.com — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0100
We started Day 5 of Zend Studio for Ecliipse Training.

Day 5:

Unit Testing
Why use Unit Testing? With Unit Testing you can develop in a controlled environment where each alteration of code is test before future alteration. It basically means, if you make a change you run a full test before making any other changes. This eliminates bugs being cause by "bug fixes" and "updates".

You can read about Unit Testing in John's blog: PHPUnit